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Chavez's TV drama touches off Fox fight
Venezuelan leader uses show to slam neighbours Increasingly at odds with

Mexico, U.S.
Nov. 26, 2005. 01:00 AM
OAKLAND ROSS
FEATURE WRITER


A weekly television show is probably not the best place to conduct foreign policy, but Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez likes to make his own rules.

Plus, he has a weekly television show.

The program is called Alo, Presidente ("Hello, President") and it dominates the Venezuelan airwaves every Sunday, as South America's most voluble and least predictable leader takes phone calls, talks politics, screens videos, muses about his alimentary system, and pretty much does whatever he likes.

Now, more or less as a result, the Venezuelan government and the leaders of Mexico are locked in a rancorous diplomatic dispute that has led to a mutual withdrawal of ambassadors, while exposing a broad ideological rift that divides a clutch of Latin American neighbours and erstwhile friends.

Looking south from Washington, the government of U.S. President George W. Bush cannot be happy.

"I think the United States is really concerned," says Eduardo del Buey, executive director of the Canadian Foundation for the Americas, an Ottawa think-tank. "They're realizing they are fairly isolated in the region, and they've got to start paying closer attention."

And to think that the latest chapter in this drama started with just three little words.

Cachorro del imperio.

In Spanish, it means "the empire's puppy," and it's the label Chavez pinned to the lapel of Mexican President Vicente Fox after a meeting of hemispheric leaders earlier this month in the Argentine resort town of Mar del Plata.

The Venezuelan was upset that Fox had tried to rekindle interest in a free-trade agreement uniting all the Americas â€â€